Madrid Metro
The Madrid Metro is a rapid transit system serving the metropolitan area of Madrid, the capital of Spain. First opened in 1919, the system has regularly undergone numerous extensions over the next century, bringing it to today's network which comprises thirteen "conventional" lines and three light-rail lines known as Metro Ligero. The network is largely owned and operated by Metro de Madrid S.A., a public company owned by the Government of the Community of Madrid.
, the conventional lines have a combined length of, making Madrid's Metro system the 20th longest rapid transit system in the world, the 6th longest in the world outside of China, and the 3rd longest in Europe behind only the Moscow Metro and the London Underground; the three light-rail lines add a further to the total length of the network. The whole system transported a total of 715 million passengers in 2024 – in this metric Madrid's system stands as the 29th most-used in the world and the 5th most-used in Europe, behind Moscow, Paris, London and Istanbul.
Unlike Spanish road traffic and most railway lines in the country, which drive on the right, trains on the heavy-rail lines of the Madrid Metro have operated with left-hand running since the system's inception. The light-rail part of the network, on the other hand, runs on the right, as much of it operates at street level.
Within the Community of Madrid, the Madrid Metro is complemented by the Madrid Cercanías suburban rail services managed by the national rail operator Renfe, as well as a large network of urban bus lines operated by the city-owned EMT Madrid, and a collection of interurban bus lines that serve municipalities outside of the city's boundaries, managed by the Community of Madrid itself but operated by private companies on a concession basis. All of these public transportation networks have a unified fare system, which is managed by the Consorcio Regional de Transportes de Madrid, a public body run by a consortium of various local governments of the Community of Madrid.
Trains are in circulation every day from 6:00 am until 1:30 am, though during the weekends, this schedule was to be extended by one more hour in the morning in 2020. Furthermore, the regional government intended to keep stations open around the clock during these days from 2023 onwards. It had only stayed open for 24 hours during the 2017 World Pride and during the 2021 Madrid snowstorm.
As of January 2024, the Madrid Metro has 1,710 escalators and 559 elevators.
History
1916–1918: conception and financing
On 19 September 1916, a royal decree approved the 4-line plan for the creation of the metro of Madrid. The engineers who created the plan - Mendoza, González Echarte, and Otamendi - then began the process of raising 8 million pesetas to begin the first phase of the project, the construction of Line 1 from Sol to Cuatro Caminos. Carlos Mendoza made contact with Enrique Ocharán, the director of Banco de Vizcaya, who offered 4 million pesetas on the condition that the public pledged an additional 4 million.Mengemor published a brochure to persuade people to make donations. The men were able to raise 2.5 million pesetas of the 4 million they needed. King Alfonso XIII intervened and invested 1.45 million pesetas of his own money.
1919: construction and inauguration
The first phase of construction was finished in 1919. It was constructed in a narrow section and the stations had platforms. The enlargement of this line and the construction of two others followed shortly after 1919. The Madrid metro was inaugurated on 17 October 1919 by King Alfonso XIII. At the time of inauguration, the metro had just one line, which ran for between Puerta del Sol and Cuatro Caminos, with eight stops.The king, the royal family, and others took part in the first official metro ride which went from Cuatro Caminos to Ríos Rosas and took 40 seconds. There they stopped for one minute, before traveling to the Chamberí station which took 45 seconds. The trip went all the way to the end point, Sol. The king and his family then rode the metro back to Cuatro Caminos from Sol, this time without stopping. The journey took 7 minutes and 46 seconds.
After the journey, a lunch was served on the Cuatro Caminos platform, and the engineers were congratulated for creating a "miracle."
Two days later, on 19 October 1919, the Madrid metro was opened to the public. On its first day, 390 trains ran, 56,220 passengers rode the metro, and the company earned 8,433 pesetas from ticket fares.
During November and December 1919, the metro had an average of 43,537 passengers a day and earned an average of 6,530 pesetas a day from ticket sales. Due to their success, the company decided to expand more, and created 12,000 new shares to sell to the public to raise more funds to fund further expansion.
1920–1921: expansion of Line 1 and construction of Line 2
The Company then began to gather materials necessary to expand the Line 1 from Sol with the new stations Progreso, Antón Martín and finally Atocha. The latter was then and is now an important train station for mainline rail.On 31 July 1920 the company submitted its proposal to extend Line 1 from Atocha to Puente de Vallecas. In 1921 the company declared its interest in beginning the line from Sol to Ventas, with the first phase of the project being built from Sol to Goya, along Calle Alcalá.
Work began on 27 March 1921 to expand Line 1 from Atocha to Vallecas, and to begin construction on a line from Sol to Goya.
On 26 December 1921 the Sol-Atocha section of Line 1 was inaugurated, adding three new metro stops to the line: Progreso, Antón Martín, and Atocha. The king and queen, Don Alfonso XIII and Doña Victoria, attended the inauguration.
1922 and onwards
In 1924, traffic in Madrid switched from driving on the left to driving on the right, but the lines of the Madrid Metro kept operating on the left hand side. In 1936, the network had three lines and a branch line between Ópera and the old Estación del Norte. All these stations served as air raid shelters during the Spanish Civil War. After the Civil war, the public work to extend the network went on little by little. In 1944, a fourth line was constructed, absorbing the branch of Line 2 between Goya and Diego de León in 1958, a branch that had been intended to be part of Line 4 since its construction but was operated as a branch of Line 2 until construction works had finished.In the 1960s, a suburban railway was constructed between Plaza de España and Carabanchel, linked to lines 2 and 3. A fifth metro line was constructed as well with narrow sections, but 90m platforms. Shortly after opening the first section of Line 5, the platforms of Line 1 were enlarged from 60 to 90m, permanently closing Chamberí station since it was too close to Iglesia. Chamberí has been closed ever since and was recently reopened as a museum.
In the early 1970s, the network was greatly expanded to cope with the influx of population and urban sprawl from Madrid's economic boom. New lines were planned with larger 115m long platforms. Lines 4 and 5 were enlarged as well. In 1979, bad management led to a crisis. Projects that had already started were finished during the 1980s and all remaining ones were abandoned. After all those projects, of rail track was completed by 1983 and the suburban railway had also disappeared since it had been extended to Alonso Martínez and subsequently converted to the new Line 10.
Expansion from the 1990s
Work on a major expansion of the metro began in 1995, with of new line and 132 new stations opened by 2011, built in 4 phases. The average construction pace throughout that era was among the fastest in the world at that time and was equalled or surpassed by only very few metros in the global north either then or since.This included the extension of lines 1, 4 and 7 and the construction of a new Line 11 towards the outlying areas of Madrid. Lines 8 and 10 were joined into a longer Line 10 and a new Line 8 was constructed to expand the underground network towards the airport. The enlarged Line 9 was the first to leave the outskirts of Madrid to arrive in Rivas-Vaciamadrid and Arganda del Rey, two satellite towns located in the southeast of Madrid. Control of the network was transferred to a public enterprise, Metro de Madrid S.A.
In the early 2000s, a huge project installed approximately of new metro tunnels. This construction included a direct connection between downtown Madrid and the airport, a further extension of Line 8, and adding service to the outskirts with a 40 km loop called MetroSur serving Madrid's southern suburbs.
MetroSur, one of the largest ever civil engineering projects in Europe, opened on 11 April 2003. It included of tunnel and 28 new stations, with a new interchange station on Line 10, connecting it to the city centre and stations linking to the local train network. Its construction began in June 2000 and the whole loop was completed in less than three years. It connects Getafe, Móstoles, Alcorcón, Fuenlabrada, and Leganés, five towns located in the south of Madrid. As the metro line is part of a project to develop the area, some stations lay in sparsely populated places or were even surrounded by fields at the time of opening.
Most of the efforts of Madrid regional government in 2000s were channeled towards the enlargement of the Metro network. In the 2003–2007 term, President Esperanza Aguirre funded a multibillion-euro project, which added new lines, and joined or extended almost all of the existing metro lines. The project included the addition of of railway and the construction of 80 new stations. It brought stations to many districts that had never previously had Metro service and to the eastern and northern outskirts as well. For the first time in Madrid, three interurban light rails lines were built to the western outskirts – ML2 and ML3 – and to the new northern districts of Sanchinarro and Las Tablas – ML1. As a last minute addition, a project on line 8 connected it to the new T4 terminal of Madrid-Barajas Airport.
Since 2008, however, the process of expanding the network has significantly slowed. The 2008 financial crisis stalled many expansion projects that had been in their pending stages at the time, while during the 2010s, improving the existing network was considered a higher priority than enlarging it, with major projects such as the [|improved accessibility plan] being put into place. As a result, while all lines except for the line 6 had benefitted from at least some form of extension between 1999 and 2008, during the 2010s only four extension projects were completed: line 11 was taken to La Fortuna in 2010, line 2's eastern extension to Las Rosas opened in 2011, and line 9's northwestern end was extended further north in two stages: to Mirasierra in 2011 and to Paco de Lucía in 2015.
The network celebrated its 100th anniversary on 17 October 2019. Google commemorated this milestone with a Google Doodle.
In April 2025, line 3 started serving El Casar station in Getafe after a one-station extension from Villaverde Alto was opened, which ended a 10-year-long period without any new line extensions in the city. The station at El Casar forms an interchange with line 12, giving the latter a second direct interchange with the rest of the Metro network.